Source Depth of Burial Experiment at Balapan

Settings and Objectives

Shown below are the locations of near source seismic measurements consisting of 8 portable stations deployed at various azimuths and ranges (100m to 20 km). These stations were deployed by LANL in vaults constructed by the NNC. The Balapan map (below right) is an inset of the Kazakhstan map (left).

Locations of Former Soviet Union's Semipalatinsk test site and the regional seismic stations deployed by the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory under contract to LLNL are shown in the map of Kazakhstan below.

The main objective of the Depth of Burial Experiment was to validate whether source depth of burial can help identify underground nuclear explosions from observations at distance ranges of 100 - 1000 km. A secondary objective was to help calibrate the Kazakhstan seismic network, especially the primary IMS station at MAKanchi and the auxiliary IMS stations at KURchatov and AKTyubinsk.